Alba adjusted the black ribbon around her neck, tightening it like a noose.
She had summoned the remaining consigliere and senior associates to her father's study for a memorial toast. Publicly, it was to honor Enzo Marino's legacy. Privately, it was bait.
The wolves had come dressed in mourning.
They stood in tailored suits and polished shoes, sipping wine Enzo had once forbidden them to touch. Laughing too softly. Eyes too quick to look away from hers.
She knew what they were thinking.
"The Don is dead. The girl is next."
But Alba wasn't a girl anymore.
She was what the fire had left behind.
---
From the corner of the room, a man watched her.
He was in his late forties, with thinning hair and a priest's smile. No one remembered his name. Not really. Not even the way he used to walk beside Enzo with his hands always tucked neatly behind his back.
Gianni Marino had changed his face.
Trimmed his beard. Altered his gait. Gained weight. Lost a name.
Now, he was Signor Luca Bernardi, a foreign investor and old family friend from Naples.
And no one—no one—recognized him.
No one except Alba.
---
Earlier that morning...
Alba had been digging through Enzo's safe. Behind his will. Behind the title deeds. She found a file wrapped in black twine.
Inside: a photo.
Surveillance. Taken from a rooftop across a train station.
Gianni. Different hair. New face. Same eyes.
Her pulse hadn't even quickened.
She'd only whispered, "You're still alive."
And you came back.
---
Now, in the dim candlelight of the study, she raised her glass.
"To my father," she said softly. "To a man who taught me never to flinch in the face of betrayal. May his memory outlive the traitors who smiled at his table."
A flicker passed through the room.
Someone coughed.
And across the room, Signor Bernardi smiled too widely.
---
Gianni
She knows.
She didn't say it aloud. But Gianni saw it in her eyes.
The same gaze Enzo had—sharp, dissecting. The kind that didn't see people as flesh and soul but as movements, motives, threats.
His niece had grown teeth.
And she had survived him.
The plan was supposed to be simple: remove Enzo, control Alba, inherit the throne through her silence.
But now he realized something terrible.
She wasn't going to inherit the throne.
She was going to take it.
---
Later that night, as the last guest left the Marino estate, Alba stood at her father's window.
She lit one of his cigars, eyes trained on the driveway below.
Gianni's car rolled past the gates.
She exhaled a trail of smoke and whispered:
"Checkmate."
---